And I think for a lot of people, this is gonna be their introduction to the series. Yeah, it's been a really long time since we had a Castlevania before this. So that's why I think we had a good team because we had like, different points of view in this area. Castlevania obviously says something to every video game fan, but in a different way. So it's really like a melting pot of different. And they loved like, Symphony of the Night, for instance, fans of the TV show, as well. Laulan: We had people that never played it that started to play it for the creation of the DLC. Like, can we do that? Can we do these characters like this? And he was reviewing everything.ĭupré: He was like a human Wikipedia of the franchise. So this was interesting, to see the team appropriate itself to all this content, because we have really hardcore fans of Castlevania, like one of them being the biggest fan possible. And we have younger players on the team and older players. So it's more like a part of my childhood that I actually never played, but that was still part of it. Laulan: For me, I was an NES player, as well. It's a childhood dream I did not know I had, actually. And I joined the company, and I loved that I was going to work on that. It's funny because before joining Evil Empire to work on Dead Cells, I was saying to the boss, “It's crazy that Konami never asked for you guys to make Castlevania stuff into Dead Cells.” And then I kind of understood that something was going on. What is your connection to the Castlevania series, just on a personal level? What did the series mean to you before Dead Cells?ĭupré: I was turning eight, Castlevania 1 is my second game on the NES. So it's kind of a nice way to go back to where it all started. We really wanted to circle back to where it all started, because as you know, Dead Cells’ main inspiration was Symphony of the Night. And there are of course tons of surprises, Easter eggs, lore rooms … it's basically a love letter to Castlevania. But translated into the Dead Cells music style. And we also have new compositions that were made by the Dead Cells composer of all the classics, such as Bloody Tears…ĭupré: Vampire Killer. So you can basically replace all of the Dead Cells music their version Castlevania. So what we did is we a Castlevania mod into the music submenu of the options. We had permission from Konami to use all the old soundtracks from the old Castlevania games. We have two new biomes based on the classic Castlevania levels. We have three new bosses, one of them being an incredible showdown that we won’t talk yet, but that is super exciting and something never seen before in the game. Laulan: We had a lot of Castlevania weapons in Dead Cells… already an homage for us, but now we had to think again okay, this weapon is already in the game.ĭupré: Yeah, the Vampire Killer at the time was called Valmont's whip instead of Belmont's whip. We tried to translate it into Dead Cells’ fast-paced gameplay. We have 14 new weapons like Alucard’s sword, Alucard’s shield, the old classic cross.īérenger Dupré: Pretty much every weapon from Castlevania that we hadn't copied before. Since this is a roguelite, we tried to find a way to make it interesting to new players and newcomers to be introduced to this world and the new items and stuff. So, you will see Richter Belmont, Alucard, Dracula, Maria Renard, and many others that will guide you through this new storyline to basically discover the content that we included. You get this new storyline, including all of the usual suspects of the Castlevania series. It's basically twice as big as we previously released. That's something we always say, but it really is. Game Informer: Just as a brief overview, what can we expect from this Castlevania DLC?īenjamin Laulan: Well, it's our biggest DLC yet. Game Informer got the chance to speak with Evil Empire’s co-founder Benjamin Laulan and brand manager Bérenger Dupré to talk about the DLC, what we can expect from it, and what it was like working with such a beloved franchise. While Dead Cells was developed by Motion twin, the Castlevania DLC is being developed by Evil Empire, an indie studio made of ex-Motion Twin employees that have handled most of the game’s post-launch content. To take such a big leap – and to do it with the series that inspired the game in the first place – is a huge step for the indie roguelike. It came as a total surprise Castlevania hasn’t had a new release in years, and most of Dead Cells’ other collaborations never amounted to much more than referential skins and a few weapons. During the 2022 Game Awards, the team behind Dead Cells put out an animated teaser trailer announcing that the game’s next DLC expansion would be Castlevania-themed.
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